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Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews
3/12/26 Shaiel Ben-Ephraim: A Look Inside Israel During the War with Iran
00:56:49
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- [00:06]
Scott Horton
You ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest according to the American people. What's going on in this country? We're dealing with Hitler revisited.
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Shell Ben Efraim
This is the Scott Horton show. Libertarian foreign policy mostly.
- [00:22]
Scott Horton
When the President does it, that means that it is not a liberty. We're gonna take out seven countries. They don't know what the they're doing. Negotiate now. End this war.
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Shell Ben Efraim
And now, here's your host, Scott Horton.
- [00:40]
Scott Horton
Okay guys, introducing Shell Ben Efraim and he is the co author of a show called the Grand Reckoning with Daniel Ray Burdette. And they've had me on their show a couple of times, a couple of nice guys and we've been on there a bit and then I've been prize, I guess it was the last time I was on, maybe the time before that too. I thought, wow, you asked some pretty knowledge based questions about some of these things and I see that you've been tweeting up a storm since the start of the Iran war and particularly about what you're hearing from connections inside Israel. So can you please tell us, sir, where are you from, what is your deal and how is it that you know so much about what people are saying inside Israel? Not just people, but including apparently military leaders and others.
- [01:32]
Shell Ben Efraim
Welcome. Thank you. Yeah, so I'm shy. Albina Fry. I'm Israeli, born in Israel, raised in Israel, served in the idf, worked in the Israeli government. So I have a, a long standing network of people I, I served with, worked with and went to school with who are, are in the IDF and in the Defense Ministry and, and other Israeli organizations. Some of them have stopped talking to me because I've been very vocal in my anti war, increasingly anti Zionist, honestly opinions. But then I've replaced them over the years with whistleblowers, fellow travelers and other connections that I've made. So I, I have ended up having a pretty robust, pretty robust network in Israel. I also have studied Israel professionally. I have a PhD in military strategy. I did a postdoctoral fellowship on Israel studies specializing in Israeli foreign policy and strategy. So I also have the academic background and the practical background. So I think it's fair to say I have a pretty good grasp on what Israel's doing and, and why, why it's doing it. But for from a specific slant, I'm very much against everything that Israel is doing, especially since it started what I consider to be a genocide in Gaza. I used to be more of a standard liberal Zionist, but I don't think there's much room for that anymore. So here I am.
- [03:08]
Scott Horton
I understand. So when was the last time that you actually worked for the Israeli government?
- [03:12]
Shell Ben Efraim
Oof, difficult questions. The last time I did work for the Israeli government was in 2013, and I won't go into specifics. Okay.
- [03:22]
Scott Horton
All right. So your, your opinions have, have definitely hardened against, hardened against the Israeli project, as you said, since the Gaza war. And then as I've seen from your Twitter feed, you're obviously extremely against what's happening in this attack on Iran as well. Then you've had these pretty long, sort of semi blog post length type tweets explaining, you know, about what you're hearing from inside Israel as far as opinions about the war, opinions about Iran's retaliation, opinions about Hezbollah and I don't know what. So I'll just give you the floor. Why don't you go, go ahead and kind of fill us in on what you think Americans probably are missing from our perspective about what's happening in the war now.
- [04:08]
Shell Ben Efraim
Yeah, well, I think that there's more awareness of what Israel is actually doing. But, but let's start with, with what the actual Israeli goals are. Because if you watch the news and you listen to Israeli statements, you would get the impression that Israel's seeking out two things. One is to defend itself from missiles, to defend its population and so on. And the other is to free the people of Iran from tyranny. Neither of those have anything to do with what Israel's doing in, in Iran or in, in Lebanon. Those aren't the main goals. So there's two main goals. And as usual, and this is a standing tradition now in, in Israeli policymaking, Benjamin Netanyahu and the heads of the security forces aren't doing the same thing or aren't trying to achieve the same thing. They disagree. They have a coalition, an uneasy coalition, and they try to figure out how to do something that'll serve both of their interests. Right? So that's an important thing to understand. They don't agree on what Israel's interests are. And Netanyahu, what he wants is an eternal war. Something that's very familiar to critics of American foreign policy. He isn't looking to end this round of violence. He's looking to make it go on forever, or at least for long enough for him to perpetually stay in power. That's his perspective. The perspective of the Israeli security forces is a little bit different. They're obviously not as invested in Netanyahu, stay in power. Some of them actually despise him. Most of them despise him. But what they're looking for is to make all of the countries near Israel. And when I say near Israel, it's a very wide swath. I'm not just talking about bordering Israel. I'm also talking about Iran. I'm also talking about Turkey, which are increasingly talking about. I'm talking about Pakistan. Making all those countries into failed states. The way they describe it is not as failed states, but as weakened states unable to threaten Israel. So, basically, because Israel has become so strong militarily, or views itself as so strong militarily, and now has the full backing of Donald Trump, they are able to act out their deepest fantasies, which is to pursue total security, as they see it, which is there's not going to be a single rocket, there's not going to be a single missile. There's not going to be a single government that's hostile to Israel and that can lift its finger against it. And that involves collapsing all of the states near it or bringing them to the point where they're unable to resist Israeli hegemony. And this is where a third force comes in. We talked about Netanyahu, we talked about the security forces, the third force, and that's the messianic settlers. They're in the government benir sm. They have a very strong lobby. And as soon as one of these places becomes weak and divided, they start lobbying to move in and create that kind of Greater Israel that a lot of people have been talking about. There's a. A big lobby now to settle in Lebanon. There's been a big lobby to settle in Gaza for a long time. Obviously, the west bank is already a lost cause, and a lot of it is because of these lobbyists. So you have those elements. The settlers aren't making the security decisions on the grand scale with Iran and so forth, but they are the most important in setting in facts on the ground. Once these steps have been taken, they have those three factors in the Iranian people are not going to be freed. Everyone in Israel knows that security forces are fully aware of that. That's not what they're concerned about. They see the Iranian people rising up against the mullahs, against the ayatollahs, as a means to weakening Iran, not to creating a strong democratic Iran, because a strong democratic Iran would not necessarily be pliable to Israeli interests, something that's also familiar to. To Americans. So. So that's what Israel is trying to do now. And they're very unsympathetic to American concerns about the price of oil and about the international economy, because they view this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to destroy their biggest enemies. So they're willing to take out the entire global economy with it, thinking that it's temporary pain that's worth the gain in the long term.
- [08:33]
Scott Horton
So I've been doing interviews all day long and here's what they keep asking me. How did Netanyahu convince Trump to do this?
- [08:43]
Shell Ben Efraim
That is a absolutely fantastic question. I don't. Look, we can start with the elephant in the room. We can't rule out a compromat situation here. I don't know this for a fact. I'm not claiming that I know. No inside sources told me, listen, we have this, we have that, but I can't rule it out. There clearly was the apparatus to pick that up during the Epstein use of that apartment that Ehud Barak had at his disposal. So we even know a potential venue where this might have happened. They we know they hooked up cameras to it. There are certainly were other venues where this could have happened, possibly without the knowledge of Epstein or possibly with his knowledge and documents haven't been released or documents haven't been destroyed, who knows? There's a certain pliability that Trump has to foreign suggestion that is puzzling. And we see it not only with Israel, we also see it with Russia. I'm one of the few people who believes in Russian influence and Israeli influence, not in one precluding the other. I've seen plenty of evidence of both, both and possibly other countries. What about Qatar? What about the uae? There's a lot of suspicious countries that have influence on, on Trump. And I would go further. I think that Trump was promoted to be president because he's both charismatic and prone to doing things that are make it easy to have leverage over him. And therefore he's an easy patsy for international intelligence organizations like the Mossad, like the fsb, in order to achieve their goals. So I think there's definitely that as well. But then there's some. There's another thing. This is something that very similar to what happened to Netanyahu. Netanyahu before October 7 was hesitant to launch large scale wars. He thought that there were too many risks involved. And once he started doing it, when he had no choice, he got addicted to it. It gives you a rush, it gives you a sense of control, it gives you control of the narrative and sometimes it gives you a bump in the polls, especially when you're successful in the first once or twice. And you know, I think Trump is experiencing a lot of the same. After he had that success in Iran, he Was aching to do it again. He did it in Venezuela. Venezuela was very successful in most ways. You know, jury's out. But in most ways, Venezuela was very successful. So he immediately jumped into Iraq. He was trying to go to Greenland. While he was doing Iran, he was already talking about Cuba. So we also see here some kind of psychological mechanism that's pretty common of once you jump into a military frame of mind, it's hard to get out of it. Then there's a third element. Third element is that he's possibly thinking of some sort of state of emergency leading into the midterm elections which he wants to manipulate in his favor. And of course, we already know that what he's doing with ballots, we already know what he's doing with ice. There's a lot of attempts to federalize state level elections. We already see that he's trying to do that chaos, even the kind of chaos that involves the economy, which, which we may be facing now could help him to achieve some of those goals. He's also thinking about his legacy. His. He could be the, the great president who defeated the empire that, you know, Reagan and Carter and Obama all faltered when they came up against. So I think, I think that there, there's a lot of things here. And then finally, Netanyahu is much more intelligent than Trump is on the sort of traditional level of intelligence way. I think Trump's a genius in his own way, in the way that he has an effect on people and gets things done. But in the traditional IQ sense, there's no question that N is much smarter than Trump and is able to run rings around him in manipulation in ways that other leaders are not. I'm not sure that there's a single leader in the world and I really dislike Netanyahu, but I have to give him props. Leader in the world who is as capable in terms of achieving their goals as Netanyahu is. He's a grizzled veteran at this time who's able to manipulate people to his, to achieve his agenda in ways that very few people are. No one I can pick up on the current international scene is, is as good as in this regard. He does it to every single rival in Israeli politics. He's managed to bend the Middle east to his will in, in recent years. That's another element. So the compromat. I have no evidence, but I think that might be an element. Everything else, but it all leads to, to that same place. Of course, he also has donors that are very pro Israel and he has Kushner and He has Witkoff in there and Rubio, who are more than happy, not to mention Lindsey Graham, more than happy to promote this narrative. So there's a lot of things working in this direction. In retrospect, it's not as surprising as it seemed at first. And finally, Trump is not really anti war. He doesn't have, he doesn't have any real spine. He doesn't have any real ideology aside from being against immigration and, and trade. So he's pliable in that regard.
- [14:24]
Scott Horton
Hey, guys, you know I have another podcast now, right? Yeah, me and the great American historian Daryl Cooper. That is martyr made. He's my co host and we host a show every Friday night. We might be switching to two days a week here sometime soon, but for right now, we're doing Friday nights live at 8 o' clock Eastern Time on the YouTubes. Checked out our Twitter handle, provoked show. Yep, I agree with a lot of that. I think I won't go with you on the Russian angle unless you have some Russian Israeli dual citizens I don't know about. I'd be willing to listen. And, you know, I think the compromise thing is less likely. I mean, obviously it's possible. You know, he does like women. It's not like he's George W. Bush. Well, like, don't give me that. He's not cheating on Laura, know what I mean? But like Donald Trump. Yeah, sure, maybe some. Enough to like really blackmail him into doing things. Though I, I tend to doubt that that's what it is. But I, I do mostly sympathize with the other explanations about the, you know, the flattering of his ego and him wanting to see himself in an important place is being kind of drunk with hubris on the success of Venezuela and how easy that was. And also, especially with the argument about Netanyahu running rings around him. You know, it's a pretty simple old cliche about one side playing checkers while the other's playing chess. And Donald Trump doesn't know how to play chess. Right. Like, you think about those, those famous pictures of, is it Menachem Bagan and, and Sabigno Brzezinski playing chess at Camp David. And they're all the girls staring each other. I forget if it's Begin or who, but there's, you know, these are some deep thinking guys who are planning ahead. Right. And, and yes, it's correct that I think that it's just a matter of. I was joking actually, with a, a previous guy interviewing me, that it's probably they just have like the massage Psychologist, like we know that they have these at CIA. It's probably just the massage. Psychologist go, okay, first you tell him this and make him feel happy and confident. Then you tell him this and make him feel a little anxious. Then you tell him this and make him happy and confident again. Then you give him a gummy bear and then he does whatever he says, say, you know, like it's just a, an an algorithm and a pretty simple one for how you, you know, like that book the game for how to pick up 20 something year old girls at the bar. First you compliment them, then you insult them, then you compliment them again and then you take them up. Whatever. This kind, it's, it can't be that difficult with a guy like Trump with that kind of ego. I think that, you know, very much, and, and I've seen in, in the past how much that kind of flattery has an effect on especially political leaders. You know the one, I keep bringing this up, I'm sorry I'm such a broken record, everyone, but I keep thinking of this about the anecdotes of Bill crystal telling John McCain, wow, you remind me of Theodore Roosevelt. And then John McCain goes, Wow, I do. You know, I'm putty in your hands, Bill. Tell me what you want me to do. What do I have to do to get you to keep saying nice things to me like that? You know, God, but I could see that having a lot of effect and, and really, right. It's the big promise that Netanyahu made. It's the same thing the neocons told W. Bush too. It's going to be easy. Look, man, here's all these reasons to do it and there's no reason not to because why the hell not? And I think he's probably sincere when he says he was surprised when Iran hit all of our bases all up and down the Gulf, like I've been warning you for years they would do because nobody warned him that that's what they might do. And he, and he didn't think hard about it because he probably didn't even like pull out a map and try to think and come up with some questions like, geez, they did put their country really near a lot of our military bases, right? Are any of them going to be at risk here? You know, like, apparently they didn't even have that discussion or he just bought it when Netanyahu told him, don't listen to them, it's going to be fine. It'll be easy. They're, they're so hated. All you have to do is hit them hard once and they'll fall and all the people will rise up and overthrow. I mean, that is what Donald Trump said at the start of the war, Now's your chance, everyone rise up. And then in response, crickets, oops, nice plan. And then now they're in it, but they don't have a plan.
- [18:40]
Shell Ben Efraim
Yeah. And and another thing that really, that really helps is that, is that Trump seems to deeply distrust the CIA and deeply distrust, I mean they military reason.
- [18:51]
Scott Horton
So.
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Shell Ben Efraim
Yeah, true. But in this case, you know, General Kane, what he warned Trump about leaked in every single major outlet in the United States.
- [19:03]
Scott Horton
National Intelligence Council. Yeah. The Pentagon and the National Intelligence Council warn him, you know, that this isn't going to work. So, yeah, it's a mystery. All right, so let's go back to picking on Netanyahu more here. So it makes sense. On the Trump did this on the promise it was going to be easy. Now he wants some kind of off ramp. Almost certainly there's a lot of leaks like that. And he talks out of both sides of his mouth all time. Right. Who knows exactly what he agreed with Ben Benjamin Netanyahu to do.
- [19:32]
Shell Ben Efraim
But
- [19:35]
Scott Horton
regardless of what Trump's real intentions are here, I think it's clear that Netanyahu's intentions are as you said. Well, maybe not maybe I was conflating the military, the Israeli military establishment's intentions with Netanyahu's. Where you differentiated Netanyahu, he wants to keep the thing going on long because that's all about him staying in power, being a war leader and not having to go to the penitentiary. Right. Where. But the, the idf, their strategy is no less murderous. What they want to do is what people usually just attribute to him and that is the destabilization, the smashing of all of the Arab and Middle Eastern states into these smaller warring tribes. Along the lines of the odedian plan from 1981. Correct.
- [20:33]
Shell Ben Efraim
Yeah, yeah. The unknown plan was at the time, I wouldn't say laughed out, but considered fringe. And especially at the time the Anon plan came out, you know, it was the early 80s, so Israel was had already had the peace agreement with Egypt and it looked like normalization with the Arab states was not impossible, especially again in the 90s with the Oslo process. But now it's made a comeback. Most Israelis don't know what it is, by the way, but they, but it still influenced them and that's where Israel is right now.
- [21:03]
Scott Horton
Which by the way, let me just real quick, correct me if I'm wrong, but If I could summarize it very quickly, the Oded Yan plan says that the Soviet Union is sure to take over the entire planet by the end of the decade, and so is since Israel will stand alone without America or anyone else, our only wise strategy can be to smash all of the nearby Arab and Muslim states into as many small, warring tribal factions as possible so that we can maintain dominance over them.
- [21:34]
Shell Ben Efraim
Correct. Exactly. Perfect. Yeah. And, and, and that's where Israel is today. And when I, when we mentioned the differences between Netanyahu and. And the idf, you know, at the end of the day, that's basically agreed upon. There are plenty of people, by the way, in the IDF and in Israeli intelligence. I think that's an awful idea. A lot of them are the people who talk to me, but they're not making the decisions. But the ones who agree on that. The difference between how Netanyahu sees it and how the IDF sees it, this is in terms of the details. So what the IDF wants is for those sort of fragmented, weak states to be stable so that there's more governance in these places. And they certainly don't want the IDF in there. And Netanyahu seems more to want these, these areas to be unstable so that rockets and, and problems continue, so that wars continue. And that was a big difference that we saw in, in Gaza. So both of them, what the IDF wanted in Gaza was to smash Hamas completely and replace it with some sort of puppet. And Netanyahu completely resisted that, that replacement with a puppet for political reasons, because, you know, he has people in his coalition who consider that some kind of, you know, creation of a Palestinian state, which is taboo, even if they're complete puppets of Israel. And because that might actually, in theory, stop the conflict if you had a stable puppet, like look at what Putin did in Chechnya. Putin put in a puppet in Chechnya that was strong enough that it basically stopped the conflict there using horrific measures. And a puppet. And that's what the IDF wanted. That's not what Netanyahu wants, because that ends it. So what he has, he has. He has militias in there. He wants militias in there that can't control anything, that will constantly be fighting others. That's not what the IDF wants. The IDF warned that these militias in Gaza can't do anything. They said there's no reason to work with them. They're too weak to do anything with. NA Wants to work with them because they're too weak to do anything with. They also tried to create a caliphate in.
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Scott Horton
You're talking about like these, these ISIS type militias that were fighting Hamas in Gaza.
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Shell Ben Efraim
Uhuh, exactly.
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Scott Horton
ISIS in other words.
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Shell Ben Efraim
Right.
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Scott Horton
Two clicks more radical, more Islamist, more terrorists than Hamas.
- [23:50]
Shell Ben Efraim
Yeah, well, I mean if you look at these organizations, they're a weird marriage of criminals, Bedouins who hate authority, like the Bedouin version of libertarians almost and isis. And they're working together. Yeah, they're very weird organizations. They're working together because they all hate Hamas. If they ever to go from Hamas, they turn their guns on each other in five minutes. But ISIS is very important in that equation. Very important.
- [24:15]
Scott Horton
Israel. Yeah, I mean I, I always have to interject that when it comes up that here, you know, the Israelis are perfectly happy to back Hamas. When it comes down to it, they're perfectly happy to back Al Qaeda or isis were way worse than Hamas if the strategy dictates. So no problem whatsoever.
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Shell Ben Efraim
So anyway, anyone, anyone and anything the. Because the strategy is set people against each other. So something like ISIS is, is very good for Israel because ISIS is very unpopular. ISIS is hated by, by minority groups, by Shiites, by a lot of Sunnis as well. If ISIS is strong, you can always manipulate someone to fight against them. Isis. So they don't support isis, they don't like isis, they don't like Hamas. They like these organizations because they can set them against each other. Israel didn't create Hamas, but it encouraged Hamas's growth in the 1980s and so that they would challenge the PLO, which at the time they saw as the bigger problem, and so on, so forth. And then they encouraged splinters in Hamas who were anti Iranian. And when they became too strong, they encouraged splinters in Hamas that were pro Iranian to balance it. This is what Israel does. It's divide and conquer and it's leading to failed states all around the Middle east which is going to be disastrous for the United States. It's exactly what American doctrine has always been against because failed states lead to instability, refugees leak nuclear weapons, price of oil going up because it's hard to process it. And this is, and this is where the Israeli interests are diametrically opposed to those of the United States and even of Trump, who's a businessman. And these are things that we're not focusing on enough. Israel wants to smash the Middle east into smithereens.
- [26:00]
Scott Horton
Hey guys, Scott here. You know, you've probably noticed when I'm interviewing somebody or somebody's interviewing me, I've got this great bust of Dr. Ron Paul in the background on my bookshelf here. Well, you can get One like that, too. They're available again from the great artist Rick Casale. Just go to my website, Scott Horton.org and look in the right hand margin, click the link through there and use promo code Horton. You'll save 25 bucks and get free shipping at least in the lower 48 states. And he does custom work as well. All right, so please tell us, if you could let us in on some of these insights that you're getting, you've been writing about on Twitter that you're getting from inside the Israeli defense establishment and also from Israeli public opinion about, for example, getting bombarded by Hezbollah when they had been told that they had been, you know, severely rolled back to a much greater degree than apparently is the truth there. The, the Iron Dome situation, the, the extent of the damage. I know there's heavy censorship in Israel. The extent of the actual damage that Iran has been able to inflict, what it means politically and especially. Give us the good scuttlebutt, man. What's the rumor? What are people, what are officers in the Israeli military telling you that they think about all this?
- [27:15]
Shell Ben Efraim
Yeah, so I am, you know, I've been talking to people since October 7th, and the last time I heard people this mad was around October 7th. You know, on October 7th, there was a feeling in the country that the defense establishment had totally failed and had left the citizens for dead. And it wasn't clear why. Why there was no good reaction to that and so on and so forth. And over the next two and a half years, the IDF and Netanyahu have built up, rebuilt their reputation as being able to fight for Israel. The feeders of Hamas, the feeders of Hezbollah. The 12 day war in Iran was considered a big triumph. And so there was a sense of almost invulnerability again in Israel after that terrible nadir of, of October 7th. And what's happened now has really woken people up. And, and it's from the lowest levels of society, the, you know, the grandmothers going into the bomb shelters to, to the top of the idf, because the intelligence reports that were coming out were that Hezbollah was weakened and would take years for it to recover, that Iran was on the verge of collapse. And the government took these, you know, the way intelligence reports are phrased, they're, they're hesitant. You know, they say on the one hand, on the other hand, but this is the bottom line. They took the, the pleasing bottom line and they exaggerated it. So the government was telling the people how secure they are, how weak the enemy was. And then when these Missiles started landing all around the country with such force Israelis can't sleep at night. They're not used to, not used to that for, for nights on end. And they're also not getting any warning for a lot of the landings. That has scared a lot of people. And so it turns out that Iran has been able to take out a lot of parts of this carefully calibrated system of early warning and anti missiles leading to more damage with less warning than, than expected. Now Israel's keeping real lid on how much damage is actually there. So it's, it's really hard to, hard to say. But you know those pictures you're seeing, AI pictures of entire cities being destroyed and all that, that's not real. I'm seeing, I talk to enough people,
- [29:40]
Scott Horton
I haven't seen that.
- [29:42]
Shell Ben Efraim
Yeah, there's some great stuff out there of Tel Aviv being completely destroyed. And yeah, so that's, that's not real. But the Iranian missiles are more precise than expected and they've been hitting a lot of the most important targets for early warning and for shooting down missiles. And what Israel is really concerned about is that this is a pretext, not a pretext, a prelude to a massive barrage that will do a lot more damage. I know that there have been direct hits on some of the biggest bases. I know that some sensitive systems have been completely destroyed and that that's causing a lot of concern. But I think more than the actual damage right now, which is not strategic, on a strategic level, what Israelis are concerned about is A, that they've been lied to systematically. That's more the civilians than the military because the military always knew that some of these assessments were fishy and B, that they're being led intentionally into a, a forever war. So if all you don't need to, to have inside information, just look at Israeli social media right now. The frustration with the, the lies that came from the government of oh we defeated Hezbollah, oh we defeated Iran, is immense. I haven't seen anything like this in over two years. There really is a, a sense of, of, of awakening. Now to put this into perspective, this isn't leading to some kind of anti war position because Israelis aren't wired like that. What's happening is there's elections coming up soon and that's one of the reasons that all this is happening. Elections have to be held by October in Israel and probably Netanyahu will be forced to do that whether he wants to or not. So the, his opposition, especially Naftali Bennett, but even the, the left wing quote unquote like Yair Golan are all talking about how he's not being tough enough against the enemy. They're saying that he's not trying to take out Hezbollah and not trying to take out Iran because he wants perpetual war. Basically, he's being weak against the enemy. And they, unlike him, will be strong and finish them off once and for all. So it's, it's actually leading to a desire for more escalation, for more war. But the frustration, the frustration is very real. But you know, if you read books about Germany During World War II, they also started to get frustrated when they were being bombed by the Allies. It didn't lead them to be, to be against the war. It led to kind of souring against their own government. And that's what we're seeing now. And another thing that I've been hearing a lot from the army is that there's a sense that the infantry armor, the land forces are not very good at their jobs, that they exaggerate their achievements and they've been unable to take out these small, kind of dinky terrorist groups. The Air Force is doing a, a good job. It has high tech information coming from 8,200 from the intelligence and all that, but basically the infantry and the armor haven't been able to take out these terrorist organizations. And there's an increasing sense that maybe they're not capable of doing that. And that's, that's a cause for, for concern for, for, for a lot of Israelis.
- [33:12]
Scott Horton
Well, then that leads to the next step, which is, oh, well, we have to clean, cleanse the territory, which reportedly it's already 800,000 people, a Nakba worth of people have already been cleansed from southern Lebanon. And I'm sorry, you helped me with the geography here. I'm not sure, but I think the latest report was not the Latani river, which Chabotinsky had said, we get to go all the way to the Latani river back a hundred and something years ago, but that another river beyond that is, they're saying, going to be the new southern boundary of Lebanon and that everybody better get out of the way because the Israelis are coming. I know you had a tweet about this just recently. Greenwald had highlighted it as well. I just forgot the name of the river there. But it's another, at least one more river to the north beyond the Latani, which I know kind of bends around and all that, but being a river and all.
- [34:02]
Shell Ben Efraim
But this is the Irani River. Yeah.
- [34:07]
Scott Horton
So they're cleansing. They're, they're claiming now to annex like the Golan Heights or something. They're claiming now to annex how much of southern Lebanon?
- [34:15]
Shell Ben Efraim
Well, it's all of southern Lebanon. It's between 10 and 15 of all of Lebanon. Some. I'm hearing that the, the wider plans for cleansing southern Lebanon about 25 to 30% of the.
- [34:29]
Scott Horton
And that would include the Baka Valley.
- [34:32]
Shell Ben Efraim
Yes. Yeah, the wider. The what right now? No, the, the. So the Becca Valley is, is the historical battleground between Israel and Syria. It's a place that, that's very multi ethnic. It's not just Shiites, which is usually where Israel's fighting. So that's a whole different story. But Israel is, but it is a place where you could launch missiles and rockets into Israel. Of course you could launch missiles and rockets into Israel from anywhere in Lebanon is the problem with this whole thing. But yes, the, the wider expansive map involves the Becca Valley as well. And overall would be about 30 of Lebanon that Israel would cleanse. Right now what they've asked people to leave or forcing people to leave and are turning into a kill zone very similar to what they did in Gaza is 12 more or less of the entire territory of Lebanon. And these are places that are very heavily populated. There aren't any big cities down there, but there's lots and lots of villages, almost all Shiite, some Christian as well, villagers there. And they're telling everyone to leave, causing a massive refugee crisis. And just like in, in the case of Lebanon, Israel's even targeting, you know, tents where, where refugees are being located and incinerating people to death. So it's, it's very similar. They're just reproducing what they did there. Israel already had six bases inside Lebanon before this current round started that it settled there in the end of the last war. And now it's planning to build a much bigger network of bases in southern Lebanon that will be there permanently. How much bigger is in dispute, but it'll be at least three times as big as what they currently have. So what we'll see is, is probably we'll have a ring of direct IDF control, a ring of indirect IDF control and a ring where the IDF will oversee. That's a method that they, they used in Syria where they had three rings of control. People forget they have a major occupation of Syria as well, because that doesn't get as much press as all the other occupations that is currently has. Yeah, in Syria they haven't ethnically cleansed their area aside from some very specific points. But in Lebanon, they plan to and,
- [36:51]
Scott Horton
yeah, and, and that part of Syria I think is pretty sparsely populated countryside anyway. Right, so.
- [36:56]
Shell Ben Efraim
That's right.
- [36:57]
Scott Horton
They'll get around to making it pure when they can soon. So. All right, last couple questions here real quick and I'll just make a two in one kind of thing. Can you give us an assessment of what is going on on the West Bank? I know it's absolute chaos and colonization. Stand over there like crazy right now and then part and parcel with all of that. Can you tell us what is the real risk, do you think, of sometime soon religious zealots blowing up the Al Aqsa Mosque and rebuilding the Third Temple on the Temple Mount and really kicking off a third world war if we don't have one now.
- [37:32]
Shell Ben Efraim
Okay, yeah. So let's start with, with the West Bank. That's more, that's more straightforward. So the west bank is divided since the Oslo process into three territories. Right. You have A, B and C and A is the area that's just controlled by the Palestinian Authority, B is controlled by both and C is controlled only by Israel. All this was supposed to be temporary. So a lot of pro Israeli people tell you, oh, this is our territory, we can do whatever we want with it. That is, it was supposed to be a temporary that Israel held security wise in order to evacuate it and eventually create a Palestinian state. What's happened instead is that Israel has deepened its hold on areas B and C, which are the vast majority of the West Bank. What it's done in the last couple years, which is relatively new, is its move towards ethnically cleansing these areas like everything else. How has it done that? Not through the military directly, but rather by helping the settlers create militias that they're armed, they're supported by the idf, but they're not strictly idf. It has little settlements that are in areas bnc. Almost all the Palestinian settlements in BNC are small. That's why they're there, because all the major populations are under the Palestinian Authority. And then Palestinians are forced by, through murder, theft, various kinds of bullying, just making their lives impossible, taking their lands, taking their livestock, etc to pack up and leave. They've been doing systematically, one after the other after the other. Then they've changed the law. The law in Israel used to be that lands that weren't, didn't belong privately to Palestinians, were, were state lands. It couldn't belong to private people and were held for the good of the population by the occupying regime. Now Israel confiscates the lands that are evacuated and gives them to private people. To private concerns, something that used to be illegal. These are laws that were passed in order to create a de facto annexation of the West Bank. And the people who are changing these laws are settlers, settler representatives like Betsal El Smotrich and their. And their ilk who are doing that. So area C is basically clean of Arabs at this point. And area B is what they're working on now. Pretty soon there will only be Palestinians in those big city centers. You, your Nablus, your Ramala, Hebron, in those areas. And even in those areas, especially Hebron, neighborhoods are being taken over by settlers and by the idf. What happens when all of the Palestinians are. Are in those cities rounded up is a very good question. I don't think there's a plan yet, but you can bet that they're not just going to just leave them there to live in harmony and in. And in bliss. It makes them, of course, very vulnerable to, you know, blockades, starvation, all the things that they did in God. They're not doing that yet. Right now the focus is on getting everyone into these basically large ghettos. And then what happens to them is. Is. Is a very good question. Yeah. And a lot some of these places are strategically important, like the Jordan Valley. Israel's removing all the Palestinians from there. That's always been an Israeli security, security ambition. And people are getting killed and shot every day over there in order to terrorize people into leaving their homes. Like when you hear about settler terrorism, that's some kind of random terrorism. It's all very focused to get people to leave their homes and go to these. These big. These big ghettos.
- [41:15]
Scott Horton
Yeah.
- [41:16]
Shell Ben Efraim
As for, you know, just a second.
- [41:19]
Scott Horton
I just want to say real quick about that, that, you know, part of. We have this problem with W. Bush marching the entire damn 3rd Infantry Division into Iraq that now anything less than that seems permissible to people. Right. And it's sort of like after what Israel has done in the Gaza Strip, now Israel, they bulldoz 200 olive trees and they beat some old man to death. It's like, yeah, you know how things are over on the West Bank. It's pretty tough crowd where. But it just doesn't hit as hard after you've seen 16 little kids corpses in a pile from what they just done in Gaza. And so it really kind of flies under the radar, right? Under the, the somehow the spirit of relativity here. It becomes much less meaningful when you take what's happening, you know, for its own sake. You know, you could compare some of these to like, anti Jewish pogroms. In Eastern Europe or something is what they seem like, right? I was joking one day on the Twitter, there, a crystal knock here and a crystal knock there, and pretty soon you're talking about a real holocaust. I mean, this is, what they're doing to these people is just so far over the line. It's just not nearly as far over the line as, say, dragging us into war with Iran or genociding the people of Gaza. And so they're just able to get away with it day after day after day after day, what they do to these people. But it's just so cruel. It sucks.
- [42:41]
Shell Ben Efraim
Yeah, well, I, I want to, I want to remind people that the west bank and Gaza, it's the same war, it's the same campaign, it's just different theaters. You know, Israel is, is dead set on destroying the Palestinian people. Most important to stop them from having a state. But that's basically been accomplished at this point. It's their very existence that Israel is, is trying to stop. That's why they're not being allowed to rebuild their homes in Gaza. They're not being allowed to have a health system in, in Gaza. And what we're seeing in the west bank is very clearly a preparation of, of that exact same strategy against them right now. The, the, this is the, the, the thing that they need is to get them to clear out certain areas. So this is all intended to. And also the treatment of the west bank and Gaza differently is also an end into itself to try to make a conversation kind of like what you did, not intentionally like, well, this is happening in the west bank that's happening in Gaza to make people forget that they're one people who share one fate. They've also done that by dividing the Palestinians in Jerusalem into another group. They have some rights the others don't have. And then there's the 1948 Palestinians. They have rights the others don't have. So you see what they've done. They've taken Palestinians, they've given them four different statuses. Each one that has a little bit more status is desperately clinging to that status, like, oh, I don't want to be like the Gazans. And then that divides the Palestinian people. And it's already worked in some ways. You know, a lot of The Palestinians in 48 say, well, we're not really Palestinians, we're Israeli Arabs. We don't want to be treated like that. And that, that splits the, the Palestinian people up. And that's all part of the strategy, an intentional strategy to destroy the Palestinian people and deprive them of their homeland.
- [44:37]
Scott Horton
That's just horrible. Hey guys, Scott here for Mundo's Artisan Coffees. It's the Scott Horton show flavored coffee breakfast blend. It's part Ethiopian, part Sumatra. It's really good. All you do is go to Scott Horton.org coffee and it'll forward you on there to Moondo's Artisan Coffees. Get it? They hate Starbucks because they represent the war party, of course. And so they're Moondoze and they support peace. And guess what? Scott Horton show coffee is the number one best selling coffee at Moondoze Artisan Coffees right now. Just go again to scotthorton.org coffee. Well, and it goes to show too, right? All those so called Arab Israelis or Palestinian citizens of Israel, they just prove that the reason that you have terrorism in the occupied territories is because they're occupied territories. And if they had citizenship and were treated equally like these people are, they'd be just fine, just like these people are. It's right there. It's a controlled double blind scientific study right there in front of you. You can see it play out every day. This guy tried to ram his car into those people in the occupied territories. This guy drove to work and then home again as under citizenship, even under second class citizenship inside Israel. And then. I'm sorry you were going to say about the mosque there, sir. And I'll let you go for the afternoon. It's Friday. No, it's Friday to me.
- [45:55]
Shell Ben Efraim
Go ahead. They just want to be treated like human beings. That's all the terrorism is, because they're not being treated like human beings. Regarding the Alaka mosque, look that from the perspective, again, we talk about those kind of three approaches that we had. Netanyahu's approach, security forces and the settlers. Right. From the, from the perspective of the security forces, there's no bigger nightmare than, than the Electa Mosque being blown up. They view that as, as a way of. Think of it from, from the perspective. Okay, let's say your goal in life is to divide Muslims and Arabs. What's the best way to unite them all? It's to destroy the alliance of mosque.
- [46:33]
Scott Horton
And Shin Bet has stopped them from doing it in the past. Right. So that makes perfect sense. Why not to.
- [46:38]
Shell Ben Efraim
Okay, Exactly. In the 1980s, there was a serious attempt. The Shin Bet stopped it. There have been a lot of attempts since. None came as far to succeeding. For Netanyahu, you know, it might, there might be some benefits to that because it, it creates the eternal conflict that he wants. And among the settlers, there's settlers who are more rational, as in, you know, they want to kill all the Palestinians, but want to leave the Messiah out of it. And then there are ones who think that the Messiah is the ultimate goal, is to get rid of all the Palestinians, so the Messiah will come. So, long story short, today there will be a lot more support for that than there would have been 10 years ago. If the security forces can stop it, they still will stop it because it's not in their interests. And, you know, if you're the head of the Shin Bet and that happens, you're gonna get fired, or, you know, certainly your career will be tarnished by it, because most people still don't want to destroy a lot. But in the long term, it's a real possibility. I. I see on social media American Jews who support Israel. I see a lot of them creating AI versions of the temple, you know, going on top of the Alaka Mosque. When I was a kid in Israel, we laughed at people like that. We thought that they were insane. Today, they're a very large group with a lot of say. And 20 years ago, what Israel's doing now would have seemed impossible and outlandish. So 20 years from today, if. If especially the demographic trends continue of religious people having more children and the people who are more educated, secular elites leaving and having less children, that might end up being Israeli policy in 10, 20 years. Not even some rogue faction doing it. So I. I don't have good news on that. But right now, Israel would definitely try to stop that. It would have to be some conspiracy that would fool the Shin Bet and other security forces. Yeah.
- [48:35]
Scott Horton
Okay. I want to keep asking you things. I can't help it. So I guess right now. Let me. Let me end with this. What's your assessment of Israel's relationship with the Sunni Arab kingdoms of the Gulf, you know, through the end of this war and after, it seemed like, you know, to try to set up this question a little better, the policy was to use the Iranians to scare the crap out of all these shakes, that they better join in the American Israeli order in the world right now. The goal of this war was to take Iran down so many pegs that it would seem like they would not be such a menace anymore. And these Gulf states might not need them doing something like rebuilding the mosque and put Saudi Arabia right on the side of Tehran. You know what I mean? No problem. That would be the most likely thing to unite Sunnis and Shiites and. And whoever against the west in that case and then but also of course the variable here is that in fact looks like the Shiite regime is going to survive and probably with harder hardliners in power, although they may be physically weaker in terms of their military force after this, although they will have demonstrated their willingness to bond the crap out of their neighbors if it comes down to it by then too. So I just wonder like, and you know, Tucker Carlson has a theory he keeps mentioning and I'm not sure exactly what this is based on, if he's just sort of intuiting this, where if somebody has told him this, that this is sort of their assessment too exactly like where it comes from, but that the Israelis don't mind seeing this even being America's sort of last big harrah in the Gulf. And if this breaks the American empire, if this costs the American empire its credibility in the region and all that, fine, because the Israelis would just as soon not have America as a competitor for regional hedgemen over there either. And so if this is the end of what we're doing over there, we're at least leaving them in the catbird seat where now they get to they think they'll be powerful enough that Iran is no. Has no real credible deterrent and neither does anybody else. But so anyway, I don't know, I wonder what how you assess the, the current and and near term sort of post war order over there.
- [50:53]
Shell Ben Efraim
That, that is a great question, very difficult to answer. So first let's, let's tackle the X factor here which you nailed is what is Iran going to look like after this war? That's the real X factor. We just don't know. If Iran is comes out of this stronger than it was, not necessarily militarily, but just showing it can stand up to the US and to Israel, then what we're going to see most likely is some sort of rapprochement between Iran and at least some of the Gulf states. Not necessarily all of them, but some of the Gulf states. You have to remember the Gulf states tend to go against each other all the time. Right. The UAE and Saudi Arabia just had a massive falling out over Yemen. For example, Qatar and the UAE almost went to war a few years ago. So basically what I'm saying is a few countries will try to move towards Iran. Two countries will move away from Iran. Remember Saudi Arabia had started to normalize with Iran instead of normalizing with Israel just a few years ago. And if Iran can show staying power, that kind of thing will happen again. Now this is going to fray in the long term, no question about it, relations between the Gulf states and the United States. And they're going to start looking more and more to China in particular to, to protect their interests because China wants their oil, but also is not going to get them involved in insane wars or at least so far. That's what they think. You know, you never know. As, as they get more powerful, they might do that too. So it'll make China much more tempting. Another country that's going to move in to try to get more influence and already is doing that is Turkey. If Iran is weakened, Turkey will move in and take over a lot of their position as a counterweight to Israel and as a counterweight to, to the United States. The UAE is a different case from the others. The UAE and Israel have a marriage that's based on opportunity and very cynical calculations. And I think they're too deeply in bed with each other to disentangle. The UAE has made its bet in terms of their major enemies, the Muslim Brotherhood. They're involved in Sudan and in Somalia in ways that are intertwined with Israeli interests that, that, that they will remain close to to Israel. The other countries, however, are likely to want to avoid this ever happening again. Distancing themselves from the United States and Israel moving towards China. And if Iran is strong enough, having reproach with, with Iran. As for Israel wanting the United States not to, to be a hegemon anymore, that's an argument within Israeli security services. The traditionalists who want the United States to be as strong as possible remain supreme, but who knows for how long. There are definitely those who have such hubris and think that Israel should be on its own, just like you said, the regional hegemon. But the, the data and the intelligence analysis show that that's not possible. And that's why those people are not the majority yet. But who knows what's going to happen in the future. You know, that kind of viewpoint tends to go with a sense in the back of your head that God is on the side of Israel and that these calculations don't matter so much because God will provide. And there are people in the Israeli security services who are like that and they're the ones who distrust the United States the most. And stronger they get, the more there will be an attempt to replace the United States rather than work with the United States. But Israel is at its most dangerous when it works hand in glove with the United States. In, in my opinion, yeah, I think
- [54:45]
Scott Horton
the current day proves that for sure. Okay, so the show on YouTube is the grand reckoning. And that is with Daniel Ray. Boy, I am really losing my eyesight.
- [54:57]
Shell Ben Efraim
It's.
- [54:57]
Scott Horton
Is it Bur Debt.
- [54:59]
Shell Ben Efraim
Burn debt. Yeah.
- [55:00]
Scott Horton
Burn debt. Boy, can I. It's so much better when I put the glasses on.
- [55:05]
Shell Ben Efraim
That's.
- [55:05]
Scott Horton
I am old, okay.
- [55:06]
Shell Ben Efraim
That's why I just have them on. See, we're old, man.
- [55:09]
Scott Horton
Yeah, but I can't see far away stuff. I just. I got to figure it out. Anyway. The show is the grand reckoning and. And Sh. Ben F? Rame is the name. And now. But you have a much easier Twitter handle than that. Right? What's your Twitter?
- [55:24]
Shell Ben Efraim
Academic.
- [55:25]
Scott Horton
La Academicore La. That's great. And very easy. And got some really great tweets I am going to be following very close, very closely here.
- [55:36]
Shell Ben Efraim
So for 100,000, I'm almost there.
- [55:39]
Scott Horton
Oh, there you go.
- [55:40]
Shell Ben Efraim
Yeah.
- [55:41]
Scott Horton
Rt. Rt. Okay. Well, thank you very much for your time on the show. Really appreciate it.
- [55:46]
Shell Ben Efraim
Thank you. Always a pleasure.
- [55:48]
Scott Horton
The Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom, Robertson Roberts Brokerage, Inc. Mundo's Artisan Coffee, Tom Woods, Liberty Classroom and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books, Fool's Errand. Enough already. And my latest, Provoked How Washington Started the New Cold War With Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine. Find all of the above@scothorton.org and I'm serializing the audiobook of Provoked at scothortonshow.com and patreon.com Scott HortonShow Bumpers by Josh Langford. Music, intro and outro videos by Dissident Media. Audio mastering by Podsworth Media. See y' all next time.